ill will | Luke Castellan |

three

three

The four demigods woke up to a flock of harpies  outside of their small hut. The older three groaned, grabbing their weapons, while Annabeth just armed herself and got ready to head out.

The quartet quickly defeated the flock, and packed up to head out.

They were heading up the eastern seaboard, so their next stop was Pennsylvania.

Annabeth caused them to stop multiple times, as she needed a break much more frequently than the other three. They had stopped near an old bridge, and waited while Annabeth went to use the restroom.

Noelle was throwing stones in the water, Thalia was polishing her spear, and Luke was frowning at his golf club.

"What do you think I should do about this?" He asked the two girls. Thalia shrugged, and Noelle giggled. "Smack monsters with it?"

Luke groaned. "That's not what I meant. You guys all have celestial bronze weapons. I just have a golf club. How'm I supposed to help kill monsters?"

"Guys!" Annabeth was heading back. "Look what I found!" She was holding a sword, one made of celestial bronze. The two girls met each other's gazes, smiling as they knew a certain god had been listening.

Luke, however just grabbed the sword out of the young demigod's hands. He hefted the sword around, trying to see if it felt right, and grinned. "This is perfect! It's like it was made for me!"

Annabeth giggled while the two older girls rolled their eyes and smiled.

x.x.x.

two weeks later

The quartet was in New York now, where for some reason, the monster attacks were less frequent. Traveling through the state seemed almost like a breeze rather than a roller coaster, which of course worried Noelle.

"Luke, this feels weird." She brought up one night when she was cuddling with him. "There has been almost no monster attacks since we crossed the border from Pennsylvania. I think something's wrong."

Luke waved it off. "There is never as much monsters attacks when we're in New York, remember? I'm sure we're fine." He swooped down and placed a kiss on the daughter of Nemesis's cheek, making her giggled.

"We get it, lovebirds! You like each other, but let us sleep!" Thalia's voice rang out, making Noelle blush and Luke laugh.

"You betcha, Thals!" The son of Hermes called, ignoring the small nudge from the curly haired girl.

He turned back to his girlfriend to see her small pout. The demigod smiled and tightened his grip on her, hugging her tightly to her chest.

Luke could feel Noelle relax and snuggled into arms, and soon the two demigods fell asleep.

Of course the peace couldn't last for long.

Annabeth was awoken by a hissing sound from outside. She quickly shook Thalia awake, who in turn work up Luke and Noelle. The four all readied their weapons, and walked out to see the place was surrounded by empousai. Noelle rolled her eyes and started shooting arrows at the monsters.

One by one, the monsters fell until there was only a few left. Annabeth was swinging her knife, turning the monsters to dust easily for some odd reason. Noelle was having a little more difficultly with her monsters, but she was managing. Luke kept being distracted by their charmspeak, and Noelle had to keep yelling to him. Thalia has the worst end though. Her monsters just wouldn't die.

The empousai were killed, but then came the next wave of monsters. Hellhounds.

Annabeth quickly hid in a tree, knowing she would get hurt more if she participated in the fight.

Luke tried to kill the hellhounds, but was waning after just fighting the empousai. His swings were sluggish and you could tell he had only had the sword for a little while.

Noelle kept shooting arrows, but all they seemed to do was stuck out of the monsters. It took her eight arrows to kill one hellhound, which made the daughter of Nemesis very glad her quiver never emptied.

Thalia was once again having they worst luck. In seemed she was who the monsters were really after, and that the other three demigods were just a distraction. She slashed at the hellhounds with her spear, but much like Noelle's it took a while to kill them, and much like Luke she was tiring.

Eventually the monster got the best of her, and slashed her leg. Thalia let our a muffled scream, and Annabeth jumped down, stabbing the monster and killing it.

Noelle and Luke, who has killed their bunch of hellhounds, hurried over and kneeled beside Thalia.

"Can you walk on it?" Noelle asked her best friend. Thalia winced, and nodded. "Yeah, but it'll hurt. Why?"

Luke and Noelle exchanged a glance. "How far away are we from Connecticut?" The daughter of Nemesis asked the son of Hermes.

"Not far." The blonde answered and Noelle blew a strand of her hair out of her face. "Great. Let's get moving then."